Melanoma Leads Skin Cancer Malpractice Cases Over 95 Years

TOPLINE:

In a review of physician-related malpractice cases from 1930 to 2025, melanoma was the most frequently litigated skin cancer, and failure or delay in diagnosis was the most common allegation, with documented death in nearly one third of cases.

METHODOLOGY:

Researchers conducted a review of physician-related medicolegal cases involving skin cancer using the LexisNexis legal database and identified 188 unique cases from 1930 through May 2025.

Cases were included if physicians were named as defendants and the litigation centered on diagnosis or management of a cutaneous malignancy.

Study outcomes examined case characteristics including cancer type, practice setting, defendant specialty, primary allegations, clinical outcomes, and case verdicts across the US.

TAKEAWAY:

Melanoma accounted for 49.5% of litigated cases, followed by squamous cell carcinoma (21.6%), basal cell carcinoma (14.2%), unspecified skin cancer (11.6%), and other rare tumors (3.1%). Death was reported in 29.8% of cases and metastatic disease in 39.9%.

Failure or delay in diagnosis was the leading allegation (38.1%), followed by treatment or management errors (24.2%), misdiagnosis (11.4%), “deliberate indifference” (8.3%), inadequate informed consent (7.5%), and pathology-related errors (7.2%).

Family physicians were the most common defendants (27.5%), followed by dermatologists, including Mohs surgeons (20.1%), and pathologists or dermatopathologists (14.4%), followed by general or plastic surgeons (7.9%), and internists (4.4%). Most cases originated in private practices (59.7%), and New York (16.0%) and California (13.3%) were the states with the most cases.

Among 109 closed cases, 5.5% resulted in plaintiff verdicts, whereas defense verdicts predominated in 55.0%. Plaintiff awards ranged from $10,000 to $4.25 million.

IN PRACTICE:

“This comprehensive review demonstrates that melanoma is the most frequently litigated skin cancer, particularly in cases involving metastatic disease or death, and that family physicians are the most commonly named defendants overall,” the authors wrote. “By examining both allegations and outcomes,” they added, “this analysis provides a pragmatic assessment of real-world litigation exposure and the clinical scenarios that expose physicians to legal proceedings, financial cost, reputational harm, and psychological burden, regardless of case disposition.”

SOURCE:

The study was led by Ghassan Barnawi, MD, Division of Dermatology, McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, and was published online on February 20, 2026, in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology.

LIMITATIONS:

The study relied on published court decisions, which likely underestimated malpractice burden by excluding settlements and unreported claims.

DISCLOSURES:

The study did not receive any funding. The authors reported having no relevant conflicts of interest.

This article was created using several editorial tools, including AI, as part of the process. Human editors reviewed this content before publication.

The study had no commercial funding. The authors had no relevant disclosures.

A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com